CAOS Project for Summer Semester (FireFox)

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

Recently, several people have requested that Mozilla FireFox be part of the SIUE Computer Science Dept.’s common computer lab setup.  I am not opposed to this suggestion but there are a few issues that must be addresses first.  I suspect that someone (or a group of people) with a small amount of technical expertise and time to examine the Mozilla forums could probably address all three of these concerns.  However, I have been meaning to do this for almost a semester now and I have not gotten around to it so I though CAOS might like to have a go.  I can provide access to a lab computer for testing and any other materials that are needed to anyone who wants to help Spread FireFox.

1. Keeping FireFox updated
We use WSUS to update IE and other MS products on a daily basis, I need something like this for FireFox that will run transparent to the lab’s users.  For example, if we could schedule an automated task in windows to update FireFox without prompting or alerting the user that would be great.

2. Run as non-administrator
FireFox may need to write to the c-drive to use some of its features.  I would like to force these features to write to c:\temp or disable them.  This way, users will not be annoyed by â€Ã...“Permission deniedâ€Ã, errors.

3. Keeping User Privacy Intact
FireFox keeps a large amount of data about users’ activities in directories.  For example, a cache of files viewed files is kept in the local profile of the logged-in user.  This is fine, but I would like that data to go away when the user logs out.  Thus I need to redirect FireFox’s cache and history directories to "c:\temp" where it can be deleted at logout.

4. Storing user settings in the z-drive
Although this is not as important as the other three, I would like it if user bookmarks and other FireFox customizations were stored in the "Z:\profile" directory.  This way they will move from station to station with the user. I assume that the ability to do #3 will allow this, but I do not know.